Sigurbjörn Lárusson's blog

Best Guitar Yet

November 20th 2013 by Sigurbjörn

My Christmas present arrived today from my good friends at Thomann in Germany. It's a brand new Yamaha Pacifica 611VFM electric guitar, to replace my Stagg S300N which is going back on the second-hand market from which I bought it from.

I spent a lot of time researching what I wanted to buy. I knew from the Stagg that I didn't just want a single-coil pickup, and that I wanted at least one humbucking pickup, but I also knew that I wanted to be able to coil-split to get a single-coil sound when needed. The Pacifica 611 is a great mix, it has a Seymour Duncan P-90 at the neck position which gives you a lovely, warm, clean single-coil tone and a Seymour Duncan Custom 5 Humbucker at the bridge position. The bridge pickup can be coil-split to give you a lovely single-coil sound from both pick-ups. It also has a 3 way switch, to activate just the neck, both the neck and bridge, and just the bridge pick-up, which along with the coil split gives you 5 possible sounds:

• Just the neck P-90
• The neck P-90 and the Bridge Custom-5 in humbucker mode
• The neck P-90 and the Bridge Custom-5 in coil split mode
• Just the bridge Custom-5 in humbucker mode
• Just the bridge Custom-5 in coil split mode

It sounds fantastic in every setting, the difference in hum and sound quality from the Seymour Duncan picks to the Stagg pickups on my old electric is staggering. It's also so easy to play and just like my Yamaha AC3M is an extremely well built instrument but yet affordable.